Russ Choma
choma@niemanwatchdog.org
Russ Choma is on special assignment as a reporter for Nieman Watchdog. He also is a reporter and contributor at the Investigative Reporting Workshop, a project of the American University's School of Communication.

 

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Filibusters and the warping of the Senate
COMMENTARY | March 11, 2010
There’s a place for filibusters, Fordham political scientist Tom DeLuca says, but he holds that using them routinely to block legislation in the Senate is not only wrong, it’s unconstitutional.


Congress may not be broken but oversight is
COMMENTARY | April 08, 2010
One Capitol Hill veteran says it is detail work, the grease that keeps the system running, that is failing, a casualty of a changed culture. He says it’s the people, not the rules, that are the problem.


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Martin Lobel
It’s time to do more than just say the economy is the No. 1 issue
If voters are to go into the midterm elections with any understanding at all, the press needs to get away from he-said, she-said reporting and look into the positions that candidates and the two parties are taking. Martin Lobel offers some vital questions.

William Claiborne
What a broken Senate looks like from far away...and why it matters
Our correspondent in Australia has ideas on how to improve things a little. But he’s not optimistic that anyone on Capitol Hill will be interested.

Steven Greenhut
How severe is the public employee pension problem across the U.S.? (Hint: Is a $3 trillion debt severe?)
Columnist and author Steven Greenhut looks at the ongoing pension issue, including abuses of it, and deals with some of the key questions.

Watchdog Blog
Herb Strentz
Des Moines Fair Coverage, Part 2
Cleaning up in the wake of the 2010 Iowa State Fair will be daunting this year. In addition to the mess left by nearly 1 million visitors and thousands of farm animals, we have a continuing saga of news coverage that told of possible racial assaults and then, in Saturday Night Live fashion, appears [...]

Herb Strentz
On ‘Beat Whitey Night’ in Des Moines
(Editor’s note: The incidents described here have become part of a developing story, as this Google link shows.) The Des Moines Register’s reluctance to identify criminal suspects or victims by race has turned into an outright refusal to do so. The closing night of the Iowa State Fair was marked by an observance not exactly on the [...]

Barry Sussman
Justice Department Shows Its Mettle, Indicts Clemens
I got this note from a friend and colleague a little while after Roger Clemens was indicted by a federal grand jury on Aug. 19th: “And meanwhile, Condoleezza Rice, Donald Rumsfeld, CIA officials and others who lied to Congress in sworn testimony about Iraq go free. If we can ‘look forward, not backward’ on torture, perjury, [...]

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Telecoms charging more to do nothing
It's getting more expensive to have an unlisted phone number. What's the logic behind that?
(Center for Media and Democracy)

Prosecute those leaks
The Obama administration has indicted another alleged leaker, this time for reportedly passing along to Fox News an intelligence assessment that North Korea was likely to respond to U.N. sanctions by conducting another nuclear test.
(Secrecy News/Federation of American Scientists)

A broad array of massive financial crimes
As PRWatch.org shows, court-imposed settlements have only skimmed the surface of big banks' wrongdoing in the financial crisis.
(Center for Media and Democracy)

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